Cape officials wary of NRA's call to arms

Local officials reacted cautiously Friday to a call from the National Rifle Association for a nationwide initiative to prevent school shootings that includes armed security personnel in every school.

Speaking exactly a week after 26 elementary school students and educators were killed by a lone gunman Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., NRA officials blamed the media for violence in society and described their “model security plan.”

Congress should appropriate whatever money is necessary to put armed police in every school but, in the meantime, volunteers – retired police, firefighters and military, for example – could be enlisted to help, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the national gun advocacy group, said.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said.

Asa Hutchinson, former U.S. attorney and director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said he would lead the NRA’s effort to develop the program. He called the problem of school violence “complex” but said the NRA was the “natural, obvious choice” to lead on the issue.

After their statements, the men declined to take any questions, saying they would do so next week.

Not so fast, local law enforcement, municipal and school officials said about the group’s recommendations.

“It’s kind of scary when you’re talking about volunteers, because volunteers come and go,” Bourne Police Chief Dennis Woodside said. Anyone who is acting as security at a school would require training, he said.

“Financially it’s going to be a huge problem,” Woodside said about the idea of having a police officer in each school.

Even if each school had an officer, that individual couldn’t cover every hall or classroom, he said.“I would be very concerned about volunteers who are armed who have very limited training,” Chatham Police Chief Mark Pawlina said. “What level of accountability would there be for that?”

It would be great to have an officer in each school but it would need to be a decision made by the local community to do so, Pawlina said.

The Chatham police have two liaisons who cover the town’s three schools, he said.

The police department has also held tactical training in conjunction with school officials and students during school break to prepare for various scenarios, Pawlina said. Now that the town has created the Monomoy Regional School District with Harwich, he has invited Harwich police to take part.

In a statement released after Friday’s press conference, Massachusetts Teachers Association president Paul Toner called the NRA’s approach to gun violence in schools “impulsive and wrongheaded.”

“We must seek sensible approaches to school safety and to ensuring that dangerous weapons such as assault rifles are strictly regulated so that there will never be another tragedy like the one that occurred in Newtown one week ago,” Toner said.

Barnstable Public Schools Superintendent Mary Czajkowski said she has been meeting with Barnstable Police Chief Paul MacDonald, Town Manager Thomas Lynch and other officials about school security.

Currently, Barnstable has a resource officer assigned full time to the town’s high school, as well as other officers who take part in an adopt-a-school program at the other schools, she said.

Although these officers spend only a few hours a week at the schools, there has been discussion about expanding the program to assign full-time officers to each school, she said.

Having officers in the schools gives students a familiarity with police and somebody to speak with if they have a concern, Czajkowski said.

“We’re all in it together in terms of providing safety in our schools when parents drop the kids off,” Lynch said.

Officials have looked at other ideas, such as updating emergency response plans and using technology to make the schools safer, he said.

Cuts in funding for mental health issues is also a concern, Lynch said.

“Our concern is the safety of the kids,” Lynch said. “The NRA will have a totally different agenda.”

While it might be wise to have more school resource officers, there are trade-offs with any such decision, Lynch said.

“That still doesn’t deal with the bigger issue which is we have too many people who have guns who shouldn’t have guns,” Eastham Police Chief Edward Kulhawik said about the NRA’s recommendations.

By trying to divert attention away from gun control regulations, the NRA is ignoring the wider issues that are involved in school shootings, he said.

These include vetting people who have mental health issues – an area LaPierre touched on briefly in the NRA’s press conference – and making sure there are enough services for them, Kulhawik said.

“Our officers are dealing with these issues every day,” he said. “I think there needs to be a national discussion on this whole issue.”